A dream crossing for many, a desire enhanced by the result of Street Fighter x Tekken; but a decade later it still does not materialize.
That announcement is far from the ComicCon of San Diego in 2010. It was at that fair when Yoshinori Ono, who still savored the success of a Street Fighter IV that dominated with authority in the genre of the fight, announced that the saga of Capcom and Bandai Namco's license to fight par excellence was going to see their faces in a single video game: Street Fighter x Tekken.
The project was going to be double, but the former would use the graphic engine of the fourth episode numbered from the first. Once the game arrived at the stores, BN would do the same by altering the order of the factors in what would be Tekken vs. Street Fighter. In the middle of 2020, what has the project been like? It's been almost ten years since its announcement.
Silence, difficulties and doubts: the path of Tekken x Street Fighter
The first information dates back to the same summer of 2010, when Bandai Namco sent a message of calm to the enthusiasts of the universe of the King of Iron Fist Tournament and the Mishima legacy: it was going to be a traditional fighting videogame with Street characters Fighter as guests. According to the editor: "They will receive a visual change so they can adapt to the Tekken style, but they will keep intact both their combat style and their special movements."
Street Fighter x Tekken would see the light in 2012
Katsuhiro Harada, director of the saga and now one of the top managers in the market operations of Bandai Namco, declared that it would be “the definitive combat” through an “amazing collaboration that will start a new chapter in history of fighting games. ” In addition, his tone was much more tenacious than Ono, more enthusiastic in the idea of collaborating with Street Fighter x Tekken. Harada was blunt: "I do not conceive this project as a collaboration, but as the competition of the century between two legendary franchises of the fighting genre."
At first, Bandai Namco had the objective of raising the category of the project to a blockbuster of international scale. Both intellectual properties were in great shape. On the one hand, Street Fighter IV; on the other, the recently launched Tekken 6 on consoles after its passage through arcade. Both had everything for the face: it was the perfect time for this double collaboration, with a generation at its peak, with a vast user base installed and the online infrastructure consolidated in millions of homes.
It was even said that Tekken x Street Fighter was going to appear at the Gamescom 2010 held in Cologne, Germany, but finally it was not so, but the one who gained prominence was the first of them. Although it is said that it could have been to prevent them from being cannibalized, the reality is that they did not transcend details.
From the German fair, GameSpot was able to interview Katushiro Harada and Yoshinori Ono about the title today protagonist; in fact, some models of the game prototype were published through preliminary images of the current state of development. The visual style was clearly Tekken: there was no doubt. In the case of Ryu, smaller eyes, more marked features and more realism in 3D modeling, all very similar to the design line of the sixth installment of the Bandai Namco saga. Expectation rose up that front.
Harada wanted to include stereoscopic 3D effect
But the month of September of that same year 2010 arrived and… the first problems. Until then, it had become clear that the order of priorities went through publishing SFxT and then TxSF. However, Katsuhiro Harada first pronounced the word “technical problems” when trying to include stereoscopic three-dimensional images, one of the main intentions of the Japanese author to give a unique expression to his interpretation of the crossing. 3D was booming in the movies with movies like Avatar, which had revolutionized the seventh art; Even Nintendo, at E3 2010, had introduced its new portable console, Nintendo 3DS, with 3D without glasses.
The main blow of reality with which Mr. Harada found himself in this purpose was the high amount of images per second demanded by the gender of the struggle; preferably 60 FPS. In other genres, where the refresh rate is reduced by half, it would have been easier, but here there were problems with having to render an image twice as often: 120 images per second. "Our fighting games move at 60 images per second (…) Getting 120 images per second is very difficult, so we are not entirely sure," he said, claiming a "technological obstacle" with current technology. Perhaps the next generation of consoles, with their processing power, could make it possible; but there was a lot left for the output of PS4 and Xbox One (November 2013).
Street Fighter x Tekken
It should be said that Harada did not venture into the adventure blindly, but said he had tried how the 3D effect felt to video games already developed by the company recently. “We have done all kinds of research, not necessarily with this type of games, but adapting others that we have already published to see how they would look in 3D. We believe that fighting games adapt very well. ”
They also referred to problems when it comes to recreating and adapting the fireballs of the Street Fighter gameplay: "We have encountered problems with fireballs, projectiles and the like, how do they work in 3D?" Harada asked.
And 2011 came: "We have not started with Tekken x Street Fighter"
2011. The year of Skyrim, the year of Portal 2, Batman: Arkham City, Dark Souls, Uncharted 3, Gears of War 3 and Super Mario 3D Land, but the year of Tekken x Street Fighter? Not at all: the game had not started its development.
Again, Harada to the apparatus to appear before the media. The producer of Tekken, immersed in the development of Street Fighter x Tekken (whose launch was already planned for 2012 on PS3, Xbox 360 and PC; later on PS Vita, then known as NGP), confirmed it before E3 of that year: “Actually, we have not started with Tekken x Street Fighter. Everything is going properly with Street Fighter x Tekken; we will know more about him in E3. ” So it was; but for the production of Bandai Namco the silence still reigned.
For more inri, that same month of July, at the Japan Expo 2011 held in Paris, said that the development was at 0%; although in his head it was 5%. Of course, the then planned Tekken Tag Tournament 2 was "almost finished."
From that point, more silence, rumors and lack of specificity in the words of the creative, with the exception of a new color sketch where you could see Ryu and Chun Li with a more stylized design than we were used to in the Natural saga of Capcom.
Everything was encouraged a little at the beginning of 2012, when Bandai began a campaign through Facebook for which fans were going to be able to vote for their favorite characters in the face of the template of fighters of the game.
Years of emptiness, new generation already started and more unknowns
The arrival of the new generation with PS4 and Xbox One did not bring any promising information for the project. Street Fighter x Tekken had established itself as a solid option in the world of fighting games, a respectful alternative that could set a positive precedent for Bandai Namco's solution based on the Harada saga, which he recognized in early 2015 that, although they were still working on the game, only a team of 40 people remained immersed.
“It's very complicated to talk about it. Obviously, I planned to launch the game much sooner than we are currently estimating. ” It slipped, of course, that one of the reasons for this extension was the saturation of such titles in the market, especially with the large number of successes by the main publishers. The next gene had started with Killer Instinct on Xbox One, but so many other developments were already on the horizon.
What many expected ended up confirming in April 2016: Tekken x Street Fighter was officially paralyzed. That is, there was no longer a single person working on the title. The information was advanced by GameSpot along with a statement that felt like a jug of cold water for Tekken lovers, but that was actually evident by having Tekken 7 now in the spotlight. First things first, and the seventh episode of the license now required 100% of the Harada team involved in the development. In addition, there were “a lot of people playing fervently” at Street Fighter 5. Cannibalizing was not an option. It was no longer the moment.
Street Fighter x Tekken
We are approaching today, specifically at the end of 2018, with a Katsuhiro Harada able to recognize that development had resumed and was around 30% of its development. Something was there, they were working on it, although with insufficiently advanced material to be shown to the general public.
Already without hairs on the tongue, nine years after the announcement of the title, an interview granted to VGC began to glimpse that the game, perhaps, would never go on sale because it was "difficult to justify." Although he was "emotionally willing," he said "things have changed since 2012 (…) I need Capcom's approval again, they may now say no."
Harada questions it: is there still interest in Tekken x Street Fighter?
Let me be honest. What percentage of you are really waiting for "TEKKEN x Street Fighter"?
(My marketing view is that TK7 and SFV are selling very well, so there is no opportunity to drop TK x SF on the market).
– Katsuhiro Harada (@Harada_TEKKEN) December 13, 2019
December 13, 2019, about to change the decade, Katsuhiro Harada once again uses his official Twitter account to consult fans, is there still interest in Tekken x Street Fighter? The Japanese wanted to know a percentage value with which to get the idea of the true enthusiasm that aroused a million-dollar commercial production. There was no point in continuing with something that had no guarantee of reaping a good implantation in the international market.
The results of that survey, still public, is that 58.7% of the more than 66,600 participants were still waiting for the game; however, the other 41.3% had either forgotten or had no desire to hear from him.
Now, by 2020, silence is the only thing that continues to accompany a title that, as far as we know, reached 30% of its development.
